


Friday

by watchyousmile



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Frustration, M/M, Marriage, Parties, past present and future tense oh my
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:07:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8597338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watchyousmile/pseuds/watchyousmile
Summary: A lesson in cherishing time.Thank you to Rosie (rosiedoesfic) for betaing!





	

The first Sunday of September was when Joe took an interest in partying. He came to school the next day inhumanly tired and not like himself, and Patrick didn’t like it. Joe fell asleep at lunch when they were supposed to watch the senior jazz band practice, and he didn’t have enough energy to go back to Patrick’s house afterwards, like he had promised.

Also, to top it all off, Joe had drunk alcohol, and that was just the icing on the cake. Patrick knew that he was being bitchy about it the first time, but he was just pissed that Joe had gone back on so many promises in one day. It wasn’t like him to do that. So, after Patrick gave Joe the silent treatment for quite a lengthy amount of time, try maybe a week, Joe apologized and switched to Fridays.

Following that, Patrick just had to let him go. From what Joe told him, parties made him happy. It was a way to let off steam for him. Patrick could respect that to a certain degree, even if it meant not being able to cool off after the school week with his boyfriend.

Presently, Patrick favors his comic books and eighties movies on these nights, the black sky soothing from inside his house rather than intimidating and hard to find your way through. The lights and TV on, on his third chip bag and seventh comic book, listening to a Costello record, at will to do whatever he wants. It’s ideal. He likes to be by himself, but not in the responsible way, just chilling out at home.

Unlike Joe Trohman, social butterfly, who has just told Patrick that he’ll be out all night. Again. No surprise there.

Here’s where the bad side of being by himself comes into play: he’s without Joe, and that majorly fucking sucks.

Joe brings sunlight with him wherever he goes. He shows Patrick a different opinion on things without contradicting him, and he’s never fully satisfied with any movie ever. He shows Patrick interesting guitar techniques, since Patrick’s still relatively new to the game, and Patrick tries to surprise Joe with a new riff for a song and such, to show how much he’s learned. Joe makes Patrick laugh with his silly sense of humor, but at the same time, he offers a sympathetic ear. When Patrick’s not with Joe, he feels almost vulnerable.

That’s why he’s distracting himself with comics and chips and Elvis Costello. Because if the number one thing that makes Patrick feel safe isn’t here, then he’ll resort to other options. And it becomes sort of okay, but only partially. There’s never a full week that he spends with Joe, so he wants to make the most of the time that he has with him.

He’s worried about Joe on Friday nights, almost as much as Joe’s mom used to be. Patrick and Joe’s mom have actually talked about it, and she’s listened to him and reassured him, but he still has these thoughts. What if Joe gets hurt? Throws up? Has alcohol poisoning? …Cheats on him?

Patrick wishes that he could communicate all of this to Joe. But it’s hard sometimes, and the best reassurance Joe can offer is that he knows what to do can take care of himself, and then out the door he goes.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Joe, are you sure about this? It’s more fun when I play guitar with you. You help me a lot,” Patrick tries not to whine as Joe puts away his guitar. They’ve just had a bit of a practice session at Patrick’s house, and it was honestly so good. Joe helped him with techniques to mute strings in power chords, and what notes he _definitely should not use_ during a solo. It made Patrick almost forget that Joe was going out. Almost.

“It’s Friday, dude. I’ve been with you, like, the whole week,” Joe says, and it gives off the aura that Patrick’s been too clingy, the sentence punching him in the stomach and internally winding him. The worst part? It’s not even true.

“Come on. Where were you on the weekend? You never even told me. You didn’t answer my emails, man. And then all week you, like, had to study for midterms, apparently.”

“I went to Ithaca, dude. Someone got into the record file for _From Plastic To Skin_ and the guy wanted me to re-record the guitar part, because it had, like, suddenly gone missing. It was wild.”

“And you didn’t, like, acknowledge that I _also_ play guitar and could maybe go with you, man?” Patrick says, folding his arms.

“I didn’t think you would want to, like, record it. You always say how you’re insecure about this kind of stuff. Pete could barely convince you to even play those two songs.”

“Dude, if you stay, we can work on the songs more. Maybe we could record us playing them, and then play it back and see how we sound, and like, what we can improve.”

“That sounds awesome, Patrick, but I really just need this night. Please.”

“I just… I don’t know, dude. I get worried. Can you please just… stay today?” Patrick asks, desperately trying to get Joe to change his mind. They do this every Friday.

“Patrick, every other day…” Joe trails off.

“I know…”

Patrick sees Joe going out to party as kind of like showering- once he’s done it once, he’s good for the whole week, but nevertheless he still dreads it. Just like Patrick’s dream is being clean without ever having to shower again, it’s also Joe being happy spending time with him. Without having to go out every Friday night.

But for some reason, tonight, he just can’t stand it. Normally Joe would leave at five and Patrick would be too engrossed in studying or some shit to feel totally devastated about it. But this evening he’s spent _time_ with Joe, something he hasn’t done the whole week. He hates that the person who gives him so much happiness is also able to take it away from him at will.

So he pulls the ultimate, desperate, last-resort card.

“If you go, I’ll write songs with Pete instead. Since, you know, we kinda have a deadline for our EP and you’re not really helping.” Now Patrick is the stomach-puncher. Immediately he regrets the sharpness with which he said that, but a boy’s gotta say something.

“Patrick, that’s not fair,” Joe says, hurt evident in his tone.

“Tell that to the guys at Uprising,” Patrick says without skipping a beat. “See if they’ll extend it for you because you’d rather be underage drinking at a highschool party than working on what’s supposed to be something you really want.”

“Stop it, dude. I’ll be back early, okay? We can pull an all-nighter starting from, like, midnight. We can work on the songs then, man. I’ve got nothing going on tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Patrick says, arms still folded and fully aware that he’s sounding way more bitchy than he needs to.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Patrick’s still sort of mad at Joe after a fair amount of eighties movies and completely depleting his chip supply (not that he could afford to buy another crate with his own money anyway). He IMs Pete, trading lyrics back and forth, and Patrick doesn’t mention Joe once. Pete’s apparently at some girl’s house with her friends, except they all ditched him so he’s just sitting in someone else’s house totally by himself. Patrick feels sorry for him.

The door opens at around 12:30 in the morning. Patrick must have forgotten to lock the door. Not that it matters, though, because Joe has a key anyways.

Patrick has his headphones on and is trying to boot up his laptop for around the fiftieth time, envious of all those fancy music producers, who, y’know, can start up their goddamn computer on the first try. Joe flops down beside Patrick on the couch just as the start menu begins loading, piece by piece.

“You still mad at me?” Joe asks. His voice is breathless, but he doesn’t sound drunk. If he were drunk, Patrick would be able to tell right away.

Patrick looks dead into Joe’s eyes, endless skies of blue like on a perfect summer day, not a cloud to be seen, even when Patrick knows Joe’s feeling cloudy. They’re brought out when he takes walks with Joe in the park, and he helps Joe go over the prime numbers to 300 and different types of conflict in writing to make sure he’s memorized them for when Joe and Patrick come back to class, because they usually go to the park during lunch hour on nice days. Or when Joe plays that one blue guitar, or wears his Columbia shirt, or when he’s happy and his eyes are sparkling like sapphires. He doesn’t know what to say to those eyes. They see right through him.

“I dunno, Joe. I don’t… _like_ when you go out. It makes me feel like you’d rather spend Fridays, like, partying, than with me,” Patrick says, breaking eye contact and feeling the glow of the computer on his face as he stares at his desktop.

His desktop background is a picture that some kid took of Joe and then sent to Fall Out Boy’s fan email, and it’s possibly Patrick’s favorite picture of him ever. They were setting up for a show, and Joe was laughing at something that Patrick had said, his eyes facing away from the camera. He looked genuinely happy, like Patrick had said something really funny, and the flash of the camera made his sweaty face glow and blur against the midnight-blue sky as he hauled his amp up the stairs to the venue. It makes Patrick happy to look at that picture. Even on a screen, Joe’s smile is contagious.

“I-I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I just want, like, one night to myself. Because maybe you and me might get confusing, like, if we’re together all the time. We might fight more. Sometimes I think we need, like, distance, if you get what I’m saying.”

“This week was the wrong week though. Honestly.”

“Okay. So here I am making it up to you. What do you want me to do?”

“Are you too tired to play guitar?” Patrick asks, hope in his voice.

“Little bit,” Joe replies, shrugging apologetically. “Wanna put on a record?”

“Sure,” Patrick says. He tucks his laptop under one arm and they head up the stairs to the den, where the record player is kept. The one in Patrick’s room is broken; it’s been on the fritz for a while anyways.

As Joe moves the needle onto some early Hendrix, Patrick says, “Keep it down. My mom is  sleeping, dude.” Joe nods, and turns the volume knob down.

Joe and Patrick sit on the couch and listen for a while, and then Joe begins softly telling Patrick about the techniques that are used in each song and how to make it sound like that, sometimes demonstrating with his hands. He whispers to Patrick how to tell the difference between hammer-ons/pull-offs and individual notes, and he air-drums to show how the guitar fits with the drums and where the rhythm guitar helps to underline the lead.

Patrick watches intently, picking everything up. If some people are auditory or visual learners, Patrick is definitely a Joe learner. He’s learning this, this unconventional way of looking at things, Joe trying to personify his thoughts. It’s a lot easier to understand for some reason, and Patrick feels like he’s almost connecting to Joe more just by watching him, seeing how his ideas translate into words and visual gestures, watching Joe communicate to him in his own way.

After the last note from side one rings out, Joe goes to flip the record over. Patrick stops him, and instead says, “I’ve listened to this record, like, a million times, dude. Do you wanna see my music and stuff? I worked on it a lot last night.”

“Sure,” Joe replies, reaching for the record sleeve on the carpeted floor. Patrick fishes an audio splitter out of his jeans pocket and plugs it into the audio jack of his computer, praying that it wouldn’t shut down on him. His computer has a history of that, since the audio-playing software thing is out of date and it only works when it wants to.

Patrick has to click his files around five times to get them to open. But once they’ve loaded up, he plugs two sets of earbuds into the audio splitter, hands one set to Joe, sticks another in his ears, and presses play.

Patrick waits, breath bated, as the familiar crunchy guitar and drum track plays through his earbuds, waiting for Joe’s feedback as he looks out the window onto the Chicago night, seeing the skeleton branches crack through the dark sky. Joe is snuggled close to him, his arm around the back of the couch, and his presence makes Patrick a little less nervous about what he might say. As the last note rings, Joe yanks out his earbuds.

“This is damn good, dude. How long have you been working on it for?” Joe asks.

“It took me around a week to come up with the guitar part, I think. It’s pretty repetitive anyways. And then, like, I wrote some of the lyrics with Pete before you came over. Can you help me with the music?”

“Huh,” says Joe. “Yeah, sure. So, you only have one guitar track here right now, were you planning on, like, doing some layering, dude? Is this, like, the finished project?” Joe asks.

“It’s not, uh, totally finished yet,” Patrick responds. Shit. He should have layered.

“Yeah. So you’d wanna layer and harmonize with repetitive bits, like on its second repetition or like if there’s some sort of riff after each chorus, then you’d wanna, like, spice it up by recording that same part a third above in the same key and then layering it. And then you can also record that same track an octave apart and layer that too. And that’ll make the guitar sound less, uh, wimpy. But I love your ideas, man. I could have never come up with those kinds of things.”

“Th-thanks,” Patrick says. He pulls up one of those digital sticky note things in front of his files and types in “Layer repetitive guitar with thirds and octaves”, the keyboard tapping beneath his fingers. A thought briefly crosses Patrick’s mind, comprised of little flashbacks of all the times his mom had woken up because of that very sound. He hopes she won’t this time. So far they haven’t caught Joe in Patrick’s house late at night at all, even though Joe’s been here at this hour before. He doesn’t want to start that now.

“And, like, I dunno about you, but I think you can fuckin’ sing. I wouldn’t suggest anything about that part. You already, like, recorded harmonies on the last chorus. And can I tell you something?”

“Yeah?” Patrick asks, looking up to face him. The glow from the screen is illuminating one side of Joe’s face, giving him an eerie sort of late-night aura.

“You always leave early after practice, right?” Joe asks. Patrick’s not sure what he’s trying to get at here. “Yes?” he responds questioningly.

“After you leave, for those, like, few minutes before my parents kick us out, Pete always tells me, ‘Man, this kid. His voice is something else.’ And Andy and I, we agree with him. We always have, ever since the beginning. Even the Cipher guy thought so. He was like, ‘We need Patrick Stump on _Shopping Is Good_ ’, in that, like, weird authoritative general voice that he has.”

Patrick chuckles at that. “Really?” he says. He can’t believe people like his voice. He was never prepared for this. He just filled in the singer slot because Pete wanted him to. Pete thought he could sing. But now Joe thinks he can sing, too. General Cipher Guy does. Patrick always thought that it was just one of Pete’s ill-thought-out ideas, getting Patrick to sing. But now he sees that it’s intentional.

“When we showed our demos to the guy at Uprising. These were his words: ‘You guys are mediocre musicians, but you’ve got one hell of a singer. So we’ll sign you.’ And it was the happiest thing ever for us, Patrick. You got us that. And I couldn’t fuckin’ care less that some record guy thought I was bad at guitar. Because we had a fuckin’ record deal!”

Patrick’s shell shocked. He can’t believe that he’s this good, this valuable to the band. It means everything to him. This band is his dream. He helped to make it happen. And then he remembers something about that day. The day Uprising signed Fall Out Boy.

“Hey, remember something else?” Patrick whispers. “You asked me out that night. I was over the moon. I had a crush on you for so _long_.”

Joe laughs, his smile wide and warm. “I did, didn’t I? And I still have, like, a totally major crush on you.” Patrick smiles too, happiness and the feeling that he truly did get lucky coursing through him.

"And I want you to know that I’m not going out on Fridays because I’ve, like, had enough of you or anything. I’m not mad at you. I would, like, definitely spend time with you 24/7. I just don’t want this to get tiresome for us. I don’t want to have a full, unbroken week that I just spend at your house, dude. I’m not meaning for it to… like, be harsh in any way. I just don’t want us to get tired of each other.”

And Patrick understands that. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that Joe still hadn’t spent any time with him all week.

“What about this week though?” Patrick asks, trying not to whine again.

“This week I was _actually_ studying for midterms, dude. If I get below a B or something like that, then my parents won’t let me on tour with you, for like, who knows how long. I can’t give that up. This is one week as opposed to an entire summer I could spend with the band, Patrick. Fall Out Boy means more to me than you think.”

“I understand, dude,” says Patrick, and he does. It’s a pleasant surprise to him that Fall Out Boy is the epicenter of Joe’s life right now, and he’s working towards more time with Patrick, but sometimes he just needs a break. If Patrick were to put himself in Joe’s shoes, he would probably be the same way.

“Hey,” says Joe. “I’d be okay with it if you wanted to, like, go out with me one Friday. You might like it.”

“I dunno,” Patrick says, feeling a little bit insecure about the idea. “Parties are for attractive people, like you,” he says to Joe.

“Patrick, don’t say that. You’re, like, the best-looking guy I’ve known,” Joe replies, shock in his tone.

“No, I don’t wanna go. Kids at school, like, they ignore me. I’ve, like, never even been invited anyways,” Patrick stutters, and the mood of the conversation turns dark once again.

“Dude, please. I don’t want to even argue about this. You’re honestly the most creative and smart person, like, in the entire state of Illinois. If I was a cool kid at school, I’d invite you to every party.”

“You mean it?” Patrick asks, hope swelling within him. If Joe’s that certain about it, then Patrick just might believe him.

“I really do. Maybe you should come out with me. It might help your self esteem.”

“I might try next week. But for now I need you to help me with the percussion bits,” Patrick says somewhat dismissively, hoping to buy himself some time to think about the idea. It’s not a definite no, but it’s not appealing right now.

“Okay, man. So you want it to kind of fill in the spaces that the other instruments don’t reach, but at the same time sort of help to underline them. It sounds simple in the song, but it’s actually pretty complex to put together. And you haven’t done bass yet, right?”

Together, Joe and Patrick begin to formulate the song, occasionally laughing at a ridiculous idea, playfully shoving or paying compliments on a particularly good piece of track. They record some acoustic bits very quietly, but otherwise it’s Patrick writing down what Joe tells him and adding in his own two cents, or it’s Joe tapping on his knees to showcase the percussion, or occasionally singing Patrick the melody, which is literally music to his ears. Once they’ve analyzed and corrected it pretty much completely, Joe speaks up again.

“You know, if you don’t want to go out with me next week, we can always just do this.”

“Do what?” Patrick asks.

“Coming to your house at midnight. We can just, like, chill out until the morning. I’d like it pretty much the same.”

“I’m gonna have to think about it, man. I’m a bit too tired to process this entirely.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Joe says empathetically. “D’you wanna watch a movie?”

“Sure,” Patrick replies. Honestly, there’s not much he wants more at this point in time than to let himself zone into the movie screen and not have to think, just let his tired mind process the moving pictures. Joe moves the laptop aside and goes to the little shelf of movies, overflowing with plastic DVD cases, some tilted in strange positions, some littering the grey carpet.

“ _Labyrinth_?” Joe asks, picking one up from the floor.

“I think that if I watched that movie now, in the state I’m in, I’d be talking jibberish by the morning. That movie fucks me up even in the normal hours of the day, dude.”

“Fair. You seem to have all of the _Star Wars_ collection, do you wanna watch that?” Joe asks. “I know I would.”

Patrick laughs. “I’ve watched those movies so many times, man. I’m so tired that I’d just fall right asleep at the opening trumpets.” Now it’s Joe’s turn to laugh.

They eventually settle on _Pulp Fiction_ , which would probably make Patrick fall asleep anyways, but he thinks it’s a normal enough movie to keep him entertained. It doesn’t end up letting him down, but Patrick does find himself thinking more than watching the movie, even though Joe’s snuggling Patrick right into his side and keeping a steady running commentary throughout.

 _What if I did go out with Joe?_ That’s the first thing on his mind. _What would happen? Would I enjoy it? Would it be different if Joe was there or would he try and push me to do things I don’t want to do?_ The last one seems worth asking out loud, so he pauses the movie and does it, even though he knows Joe inside and out and is more using the answer as self-reassurance than anything.

“Joe, if I went out with you, would you try and make me do things I wouldn’t want to do, like drinking, or something like that? Because you’d want me to have fun?” Patrick asks, his voice echoing through the small den and suddenly feeling very exposed in the dark quiet of the room and the night outside.

“Patrick, the only way you’ll have fun is if you do what _you_ want to _do_ , man. It’s important to, like, step outside of your comfort zone and stuff, but nobody should force you to do that. I guess it’s up to you to push yourself.”

That satisfies Patrick, and he presses play on the remote and repeats the words over and over in his head. _It’s important to step out of your comfort zone. It’s up to you to push yourself._ Does Patrick even have that kind of authority over himself and what he’s willing to do? Does he know when to start and when to stop, and what would make him too scared?

Patrick looks around the room, at the laptop on the couch and the guitar and DVDs on the floor, the turntable with the long, snaking wire extending from the wall, a teenage music nerd’s perfect mess. Tonight, he was here with Joe. And Joe was here for him. Joe gave him advice, and told him when he should give more of himself to his guitar and when he was being too showy and when he should back down. Maybe it was kind of like that, but on a larger scale. Patrick knows Joe, and he knows that Joe wouldn’t abandon him at a party, he would stick by him and help him through it, and let him know when he should have more fun and when he’s being too much. He trusts Joe with that sort of thing, and he always has. What could a party hurt?

As the credits roll, Patrick realizes that his decision has already been made. He looks up at Joe, seeing the side of his face, and he’s still watching the credits. He mentioned something about wanting to see who played this or that part, and they only roll the extras close to the end, so Joe seems to be keeping an eye out. Nevertheless, Patrick still wants to tell Joe.

“Joe?” Patrick asks. Joe makes a “hm?” noise, eyes still glued to the TV.

“I think I’ll go with you next week. Is that, uh, okay?” he asks, stuttering nervously.

“It’s more than okay, man,” Joe responds. To Patrick, he sounds appreciative that Patrick’s willing to come with him, and he’s smiling a wide, easy smile. Joe does sound a little excited, like maybe there’s an off-chance that he wants to show Patrick off; but really, why would that ever happen? What Joe said earlier did boost Patrick’s confidence a bit, but he knows he’s no prize. Nevertheless, he tries to put his negative thoughts away as he snuggles deeper into Joe’s side, nestling his head into the crook of Joe’s neck. Joe rests his head on top of Patrick’s, a sign that Joe’s totally in the mood for cuddling and will cuddle till the end of time if need be.

“You know I love you, right, dude?” Joe says quietly, intertwining his fingers with Patrick’s. They’re guitarist fingers, but not weird and bent out of shape like Patrick’s high school music teacher’s are, and Joe’s fingers are calloused and rough, but they’re a good texture to touch sometimes.

“I know,” Patrick replies, not really thinking about what he’s saying. Yes, he does know.

“‘Kay, Han Solo,” Joe says, laughing. Just then, Patrick realizes what he said; or rather, what he didn’t say.

“Oh. Right. Well, I do love you, man. I really do. I forgot to say it. But like, I actually really do.”

“I know,” says Joe.

As the final credits roll, and Joe’s seen that actor’s name that he wanted to see, he begins dozing off, in the sense that when Patrick tries to talk to him, he’ll have to repeat it a few times to get an answer. Eventually, Patrick stops trying, and his eyelids begin to feel heavy too as tempting beginnings to dreams dance behind his eyelids, and before Patrick knows it, he’s closed his eyes onto this awesome, relaxing night, satisfied that he still got to spend some time with Joe. His Joe.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next week, Patrick will tell his mom that he’s going out with Joe, but he won’t reveal the exact location. He’ll be a little intimidated at first, but then a catchy song will come on and he will start to have fun. He will realize that Joe is actually a good dancer, and that pop songs aren’t all that bad. He will think that the plug-in strobe lights at the house that he’s at are exciting, and he’ll want to keep track of all of the colors and patterns, but then he’s eventually get bored of it and want to jump up and down with Joe instead.

Patrick will not talk to anyone, though he will repeatedly make eye contact with strangers, and that doesn’t really bother him. Mostly he will focus on the way the light reflects off of Joe’s eyes, truly bringing them out. He will focus on Joe’s smile, careless and happy, and he will realize that he is smiling too. Patrick will feel an urge to take a photo, but he won’t have his camera on him, so he will just try to commit the pictures to memory.

A feeling of joy will spread through Patrick, the kind of joy that you get at a really good concert when you are yelling and jumping around and you don’t care, and everything is in a haze. For a second Patrick will kick himself for not doing this sooner, but then it will turn into kicking himself for not just living in the present, and looking around at all of the happiness that he was oblivious to before, and then he will kick himself for kicking himself.

Fall Out Boy will just barely scrape the deadline for their EP, which will go under the title _Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out With Your Girlfriend_ . They won’t exactly be... happy with it, so they will start compiling some other songs that they had forgotten about, songs that had turned out to be actually pretty good. They will also re-record _Calm Before The Storm_ , because that was everyone’s favorite song on _Evening Out_.

This next album will be released a few months later, right as spring will be blazing into another hot summer. It will be called _Take This To Your Grave_ , and it won’t sell very well at first, but the band will keep their spirits up, and for good reason. Because eventually, it will have way more success than any of the band would have imagined, and they will have this mutual feeling that this is what a debut is supposed to feel like. By then, Fall Out Boy will have been signed to another label that is much bigger and more widely known. It will feel like a huge accomplishment to them, and Andy will cry in his car when he hears that news that they have been signed to this label called Fueled By Ramen. Joe will claim that Patrick also got them this deal. Patrick will half-believe it.

Fall Out Boy will begin touring, and they will develop a fanbase that they themselves are surprised by. Somehow these kids will know the words to every one of their songs. Even when there are shitty shows, these kids are like diamonds in the dust, varying in number but always amazing to find, and they will make it worth it.

Joe will still enjoy partying on tour. Patrick will at first dutifully go with him every week, but then as he becomes busier with new music, he will stay back a lot more. This won’t bother him as much as it used to, because he will know in his heart that Joe loves him enough to come back to him at the end of every Friday night. And that is enough to keep Patrick going.

For Patrick’s twentieth birthday, his bandmates will chip in and buy him a brand new laptop, even though the band lives in a shitty apartment above an ice cream parlor and money is tight. On this laptop, Patrick will discover a pre-installed program called GarageBand. Recording and putting together songs will be a lot easier after that. He will forever thank his bandmates.

Fall Out Boy, against all odds, will continue to be successful. Patrick will sign his first autograph, and then another after that, and then a lot more after that. So will Joe, except he will be much more sentimental about it. Joe’s first autograph will be hung up, teary-eyed, on his bedroom wall.

The band releases more songs, and more videos. They allow their fans more of an inside look into their lives with a whole DVD of homemade videos and a film called Bedussey. Patrick will not even want to talk about that.

This will be the whole band’s ideal. Every time they will play a show, or go to practice, or meet a fan on the street, there will be stars in their eyes and stars in their souls, because no one would expect this to happen to them and it did. Who the fuck woulda thunk it.

Fridays will continue to be consistent, even as parties get bigger and wilder and more dangerous, because it is an ancient tradition, time-renowned.

Sometime in 2006, Fall Out Boy will play at a festival. A small, unknown band that nobody has or will have ever heard of will open for them. Ten years later, the lead singer of said band will go on to teach those very songs that he heard at the show to his music class, as they’ve inspired him to teach to this day.

On Friday, the thirteenth of October that year, something very special will happen. Joe will take Patrick out to dinner at some tiny fifties diner with a jukebox crammed in the corner that probably only seats around ten people at a time, and no one will recognize them there. They will make small talk, which will eventually delve into them reminiscing on all of the Fridays that they have ever experienced and how it became an evolving and ongoing tradition, and they will laugh about how clingy Patrick was about it. Then, Joe will say something about wanting to make this Friday memorable, and he will get on one knee and pull out a ring.

Joe and Patrick’s wedding will be on Friday the fifth of January 2007, exactly one month before their next full-length album will be released. Joe will come up with the title of the album. It will be more successful than anything they’ve done, and the band will really start dipping into the black ocean of fame, with all its weird bits and quirks and shamefulness. Joe, Patrick, and Andy will be subjected to watching Pete make out with Kim Kardashian. It will not be a fun time for any of them.

At the wedding, there will only be a few friends and family members. Andy will be Joe’s best man and Pete will be Patrick’s. They will say their vows from the bottom of their hearts, and during them, they will think about all of the time that they spent together in those early days of trying to figure each other out, and how they never thought that it could come to this. From the time that Fall Out Boy made their big break, the entire band’s lives will be lived in a state of disbelief that the man upstairs let them get this lucky.

Joe will say “I do” first without a moment’s pause, but when it comes to be Patrick’s turn, he will get a little bit choked up. In fact, Patrick will almost cry, because this is the dream come true. Patrick loves Joe more than anybody, even his family, even the members of his own band. And Joe will be standing there right in front of him, his sky-blue eyes expectant, and Patrick will think of those eyes, think of how they looked every time he was carefree and every time he was dejected, and how they would sparkle when Joe was telling Patrick how his voice had gotten them record deals, once upon a time. And with that thought in mind, Patrick will confidently yet very emotionally say, “I do”.

The wedding reception will be the best party of Patrick’s whole life. It will be a bit more adult than what he’s used to, but there’s still fun mixed into it at the most unexpected of moments, like when Joe will dip Patrick during a fast-paced song and Patrick will almost fall flat backwards, pinwheeling his arms to keep balance. Or when Patrick will be trying to feed Joe the wedding cake with the two little plastic grooms on top, and the icing will get all over Joe’s mouth and nose, and the two will laugh until it’s hard to breathe.

But perhaps the best moment will be when the whole ordeal is over, and Patrick and Joe are in their car with the streamers taped to it and the “Just Married” banner on the back, and there will be a handful of stars on the very top of the dome that is the sky. Joe’s arm will be on the back of the seat, and the radio will be on. Patrick won’t be paying mind to the song that’s on until a very familiar one will start playing. It will be the same Hendrix song that Joe and Patrick listened to way back on that one Friday night, when Joe was showing Patrick how the guitar matched with everything else and the technique of how it was played.

They will lock eyes, and then Joe will start to move his hands and Patrick will start to sing, and soon enough they will both be belting as the car tears down the highway, and Joe will be shredding on air guitar, and the pair will fully understand what it means to be happy with the person you love.

It means cherishing and making the every moment with them, so that you will be less reluctant to let them go and do things by themselves. Then, sometimes to be content to go your separate ways for a while, and that’s a step in the right direction. But when you are together, you are like fire, burning everything to every last scrap of what it is worth, for you are enjoying what time you have without yearning for more, because this time is the most precious thing that you will ever receive.

**Author's Note:**

> (just a note that the paragraph beginning with "sometime in 2006" is referring to my music teacher.)


End file.
